Great news: the price of each CD is the same as the previous "nice price" CDs used to be! (Unlike Dylans' remasters, which are more expensive than the newly produced album.)
Even greater news: sound is nice, clean, and not pumped like it was in The Essential Leonard Cohen remasters.
In short: beautiful digipak CDs (small replicas of the original LPs!), all lyrics, great photos (my new favourites inside, like the one which opens Songs From a Room booklet). No credits for first two albums. Liner notes are OK, but on some kind of meta-level - I'd prefer historical essay in this kind of releseas (who, when, why; history - not the text which brings the idea that Songs From a Room are echo of its time and Vietnam War, and intimate stuff in the same time).
The most important - the outtakes, bonus tracks - appeared to be the less important in the end.
Songs of Leonard Cohen's bonuses - the two John Hammond tracks - make me say only one thing: "Thank God that John Hammond left the project." Sorry, John, and salute, John [Simon].
All five bonues show only one thing - that Leonard always knew what he wanted, and he knew that better than his producers.
The most interesting bonuses are, after all, the Hammond's as they're new songs ("Store Room" is known to us from 1976 bootlegs, while "Blessed is the Memory" is obviously a version of "Everybody's Child" from 1976 tour.) Both version indeed show that Hammond was doing Cohen in Dylan's way.
The most horrorfull experience is Like a Bird. In Rasky's movie (and the book) Leonard said that he recorded first version with Crosby, and that he had problems and had to abandon it. In other occasions he said that Bird was difficult song - and that he recorded it by pure hapiness, when one nigh he finally nailed the vocal to sing it, find its way, and Bob Johnston and few session musicians luckily happened to be in the studio. That's what we hear here - Leonard obviously can't sing the song, he hasn't find the way yet. We could live without this, really.
The similar is with Dress Rehearsal Rag. The final version, from Songs of Love and Hate, is masterpiece in its harsh, stark style, despairing voice, and in spare sound ascetics. This Songs From a Room version is good, great for any other singer, but missed as the song is in question. Band is giving full treatment, like we're on Bob Dylan show, Leonard plays his memorable guitar and sings like on Songs From a Room sessions, but it's simply unappropriate for a suicide song. (While liner notes explain it's a song about the actor!?) With any other lyrics - great. If you don't follow the lyrics - great. But when you hear what he sings, and you're aware of final version of the song - it's no good.Rasky's movie wrote:I began that song in Greece. The melody began a few of the lyrics, a few of th lines. And then it was still with me. I was in L.A. I was living in a Motel on the Sunset strip - it developed a little further. Then I made a recording of it which David Crosby produced. Ah I never finished that recording. And the song continued to develop. I made a recording of it in Nashville with Bob Johnson as producer. And apparently the lyrics still weren't finished. I changed the lyrics and a different lyric appears in a record called "Live Songs". And then the lyrics changed again somewhat in the most recent treatments of the song - so it's continued being written for about eight or nine years.
What's most interesting, arrangements and production itself are in question - the melody is the same as in final version, for all songs. Anyhow, it's nice to have those tracks, particularly the new songs, but I could really live without unfinished versions. I still wonder what happened to "Priests" from the first album, or with the studio version of "Sing Another Song, Boys", as the released one was from Isle of Wight festival.
(And it's nice to finally see Joan in flames on back cover of the first album!)
(But anyhow, I'd be happy for ANY KIND of release in these parts of Europe!)
